Stonewall 50: Defining LGBTQ Site Preservation

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A key principle of historic preservation is the power of places; a conviction that extant places matter and that they can inform current generations about the lives of people and events of the past. For over one hundred years, professional preservationists and local citizens around the world have advocated for the preservation of architectural monuments and places where famous people lived or where momentous events occurred. In recent years, the focus of preservation has expanded to include more diverse buildings, people, and stories. But the preservation of sites of importance to the LGBTQ communities has lagged until recently. It was not until 1999 that the first LGBTQ site, Stonewall, was listed on the National Register. In North America and parts of Europe activists have been engaged in identification and interpretation or reinterpretation of LGBTQ sites, but this has been a slow process and in many parts of the world, where LGBTQ rights are suppressed, such examination would still be an impossibility. This symposium examines the progress and challenges of preserving sites of significance to LGBTQ communities and, by extension, to the heritage of cities and nations around the world.

10:00 AM Walking Tours of Greenwich Village hosted by NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project beginning at Christopher Park (adjacent to Stonewall Inn)1:00 PM symposium, Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall6:00 PM Celebration and Dedication of Earl Hall’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places by Ann Kansfield (CC ‘98)
RSVP is available for each of portion of the event here.

Susan Ferentinos, Public History Researcher, BloomingtonBarbara Lau, Executive Director, Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, DurhamKen Turino, Manager of Community Engagement and Exhibitions, Historic New England

Co-Organized by NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, QSAPP and the Office of the University Chaplain as part of the Stonewall 50 Consortium.

Image: The sign reading “Queer Symposium” on the lap of Alma Mater created by QSAPP students on February 208th, 2019 references an image on the cover of the first edition of Pride of Lions: The Newspaper of the Gay People at Columbia in April 1972. Where a sign read “Gay Dance” and pointed to Earl Hall, the location of meetings and dances of the first ever university sanctioned LGBT student group, the Student Homophile League, founded in 1966, which still exists as the Columbia Queer Alliance.

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